For a year now, we've been a partner of The 5th Floor; an amateur cycling team with branches in both London and New York - in fact, you may well have seen them congregating of a morning outside our Marylebone or Fitzrovia stores.

The team is comprised of multi disciplined riders, bound together through common interests and sense of brotherhood who race and achieve results in road, track and cyclocross; all the while documenting their experiences. Alongside working full time jobs they go on some amazing rides, so we've invited their London kingpin, Rudy, to blog about one of them here. - Tim.

This Sunday, four members of The 5th Floor team (Rudy, Matt, Russ and Leo) will be doing the Rapha 'Manchester to London' challenge.

It's 220 long and arduous miles, straight down the back bone of England, starting at the Manchester velodrome and finishing at the Olympic Park in East London. It will be a very hard ride, but I know it will be an unique and exciting experience. While the distance will constitute both a physical and mental challenge it'll surely be worth the effort; the purpose of the event is to help raise funds for Ambitious About Autism.

Ambitious About Autism is a charity that provides enormous support to kids affected by autism, and to their families, working to improve services, awareness and understanding of the condition.

We are very much looking forward to this event, and contributing what we can. While it's not a race we will be timed to see how we got on. Over 12 hours in the saddle with mates and team mates alongside should prove to be a great day out.

We'll be honest -- we haven't planned how we are riding. There is no strategy. The only tactic is to take it easy and slow(ish) to save our legs and energy, so we can actually enjoy the ride and experience. Riding together will make things easier for all of us and we can help and motivate each other until the end.

We will be updating our site with a report after the event so stay tuned for that.

But before then, please head over to our pages on JustGiving and make a contribution to Ambitious about Autism: we're aiming to hit £750, but we need your help.